Three Week Home Ownership Update

Just so you don't think I've abandoned this blog for no good reason, here's a rundown of what we've been doing with our time over the past three weeks.

• Remove a buttload of ivy from the driveway retaining wall
• Remove two bushes/shrubs/trees that were much bigger than we anticipated
• Cut out doorway between kitchen and living room
• Plaster the new doorway as needed
• Frame doorway between kitchen and living room
• Remove door between kitchen and dining room
• Salvage door frame from removed door
• Remove wallpaper in kitchen (including on the ceiling!)
• Remove cabinets from kitchen
• Remove appliances from kitchen
• Remove sink from kitchen
• Remove bulkhead from kitchen
• Remove wall between kitchen and dining room, minus studs
• Remove part of floor in kitchen
• Remove studs between kitchen and dining room
• Repair dryer venting
• Wash the walls and ceilings in all three bedrooms
• Spackle and sand the walls in all three bedrooms
• Caulk all three bedrooms
• Tape all three bedrooms for painting
• Paint ceilings in all three bedrooms
• Paint smallest bedroom
• Remove carpet and carpet pad in smallest bedroom
• Remove half of the tackstrips in the master bedroom
• Order cabinets for kitchen overhaul
• Order appliances for kitchen overhaul
• Select countertop for kitchen overhaul (a few details need to be ironed out before the order is placed)

Not going to lie; it's kind of nice to see that list all typed out.  It's alarmingly easy to grow hopeless that the to-do list is never shrinking.  It feels like a hamster wheel at times, but given that we've accomplished all of this in three weeks, I'm confident we'll see the light at the end of the tunnel in no time.

My Average Day (Right Now)

• 5:55 - First alarm goes off
• 6:05 - Second alarm goes off. I stir and start browsing through my phone while waking up
• 6:15 - Third alarm goes off.  I nudge Billy and tell him he has to actually get up soon
• 6:25 - Billy's out of bed
• 6:45 - I wake up in a panic, without an alarm, after briefly falling back asleep.  Once I collect myself I start to grumble about how much harder it is to get out of bed now that our clock radio is at the house instead of in the apartment
• 6:48 - Pack lunches for Billy and me
• 6:55 - Wash face, brush teeth
• 7:03 - Realize I'm not running as behind as I previously thought, get dressed
• 7:10 - Coax my hair into some sort of presentable finished product
• 7:35 - Out the door
• 8:00 - Arrive at work
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• 8:00 - 12:00 - Work
• 12:00 - 1:00 - Lunch hour which consists of me shoving a peanut butter sandwich in the direction of my mouth while sorting out a small handful of house issues, normally broken up with a half-dozen phone calls to Billy, which I am sure really does wonders for his productivity
• 1:00 - 5:00 - Work
•                                                                                                                                        
• 5:05 - Out the door, into the car
• 5:30 - Arrive at the house
• 5:33 - Plug in crock pot
• 5:35 - Realize that I'm still not ready to get any paint on the walls because I have neglected to do one of the 1000 steps required to prepare a room for paint and/or I need to re-do something due to inadequate planning/execution
• 5:36 - Lots of swear words
• 5:40 - Decide to act like a grown-up and chip away at the day's tasks
• 7:30 - Realize I'm running out of a must-have supply and need to go to my nearest Lowe's or Home Depot to pick up some more
• 7:50 - Arrive at the store, hunt down one of the very few employees who seem to work weeknights, get my must-have item
• 8:15 - Back at the house
• 8:20 - Eat a pulled pork sandwich, the same dinner I've been enjoying practically every night since May 4, when my mom gave me a crock pot full of it (thanks, Mom!)
• 9:10 - Finish working for the day
• 9:30 - Finish cleaning up my workspace and supplies
• 9:35 - Head back to the apartment
• 10:00 - Grab a shower
• 10:10 - Watch some episode of something on Netflix to attempt to hang on to one last shred of normal living
• 10:40 - Scroll through my phone to get caught up on the day's events via social media while trying to doze off
• 11:00 - Set alarm, put phone under pillow, roll over, close eyes to prepare for tomorrow's rinse and repeat of this entire sequence

Yesterday

I...

• went to Lowe's
• went to Home Depot twice
• went to the grocery store twice (two different locations, in fact!)
• went to Sears three times
• purchased and used 10 gift cards
• triggered my bank's security system when buying said gift cards, resulting in being told both my credit card and debit card were declined in front of a line of people at the grocery store
• spent four hours on the phone with Sears' customer service hotline
• interacted with a grand total of 14 Sears employees 
• uttered countless expletives out of dire frustration
• declared a bout of emotionally-motivated face-stuffing with my mom's peanut butter brownies to be a decent meal
• purchased all new appliances for the new house's kitchen
• made a rash and hopefully not regrettable decision about a paint color, walking away with two gallons
• got an entirely free tank of gas, courtesy of above-mentioned gift cards

All in all, a wildly busy yet truly inefficient day.  As I go to bed, the only real, tangible things I currently have to show for it are two gallons of paint, a Sears receipt booklet, and a bottle of largely useless caulk remover.  Onto tomorrow, I guess.

Hungry Home Owners

Here's our current situation.  We are spending almost all of our free time at the house, chipping away at any number of projects we have in the pipeline.  However, the house currently has zero kitchen appliances hooked up, with the exception of a refrigerator in the basement.  That little snag, combined with the fact that I haven't had/made time to visit the grocery store, means that we have absolutely nothing to eat at our house. This is proving to be a bit of an issue, considering that we spend all of our evening time there.  For the past few days, we've been relying on take-out, but I'm already getting nervous about the impact that will have on our wallets and our waistlines.  

via

To make things extra challenging, we have a small parade of friends and family coming and going this weekend to help us out with our to-do list, which is super helpful and much appreciated.  We can't really expect these people to donate their time and not give them food in return, at the very least.  Right now I'm planning to buy a few loaves of bread, a few packs of deli meat and cheese, and some potato chips and telling people to feast away.  But looking forward, assuming Billy and I continue our pattern of evening work, I don't think we can realistically eat deli sandwiches every day for two or three months.
All of this hand-wringing on my end of things is accompanied with a request from anyone out there reading this -- any recipes that are especially yummy, easy, and cooking-free?  I'm hoping we'll have a grill on our patio shortly and we could probably bring our big microwave over as a stop-gap measure (though I'm trying to avoid that), but any recommendations that require neither would be extra-appreciated.  Otherwise, it will be PB&J and the like until the 4th of July.  And I just don't think I'm cut out for that.

The Stages of Home-Buying: Offer Accepted!

As we shared alllll over social media yesterday, we are officially home owners!

I'm getting ahead of myself.  The last chapter I gave you was that we had put in an offer of about 90% of list price and a June 1 closing, just in time to catch wind of the fact that another interested buyer was involved.  Major buzzkill.  We got back to our apartment that night and, a few moments later, our realtor called with news.  She said that the other buyer had gotten intimidated when he found out another party was putting in an offer (AKA us), and backed out.  She said she'd spoken with the seller's agent, and the seller counter-offered us, requesting 93% of list price and a May 1 closing.  Because Billy and I are masterful negotiators (not), we quickly agreed to her terms and proceeded to do a happy dance all over our apartment.  And, just like that, we were under contract on the home!
Earlier in the home-buying process, I had imagined that we'd keep any contingent homes under wraps until we had successfully closed, in order to avoid needing to tell people that it had fallen through if an unfortunate series of events happened.  Welllll that assumption went out the window as soon as we heard the house was tentatively ours.  We couldn't get the news out fast enough!  It was such an exciting evening for us.
That was all the way back on March 19, and there were many steps we had to take between then and now to secure the house.  I'll be filling you in on all those details, but I just wanted to cut to the chase and give you the grand finale reveal!  Now that our name is on the deed, all that is left to do is majorly spruce it up and visit all local home improvement stores until the sales associates know us by name, I guess.